Toyota braking problems discriminate against the elderly?
overlawyered.com
overlawyered.com
If you cater to them, they will be more loyal and spend more than most other demographics.
And truly, if you make your product usable by the elderly you also remove a lot of barriers for other groups and reduce the friction on the merely busy.
I had something similar happen once, several customer service reps insisted that a message I was getting was entirely impossible: it told me I needed to buy competitor's prepaid card instead of theirs. I'd just assumed they had a deal with that competitor for prepaid card distribution.
They fixed the message soon after I ended the call, but when I called back later they still didn't believe me. Finally I pointed out that when they fixed the message they forgot to change it from their competitor's prepaid card number format. Then they finally credited my account.
perhaps an argument can be made for younger drivers better able to react and re-take control of the car through cool headed calculation and the sheer mental agility that youngsters are so known for.
jkjk but an argument that needs to be ruled out is that young drivers are less prone to be killed by this malfunction for whatever reason.
Good data sleuthing on the part of the blog author.
It is quite plausible that the younger and more spry drivers react better to the acceleration and are able to successfully deploy the proper counter measures.
Another and possibly more important question is why didn't Toyota install break override systems which would signal the computer to kill the throttle? This is a common safety system found in all GM cars with electronic throttles.
"If the brake and the accelerator are in an argument, the brake wins," a spokesman at Chrysler said in describing the systems, which it began installing in 2003.
No, what is shown is that elderly are in more accidents attributed to the acceleration problem. How much of it is really the acceleration problem and how much not is precisely the question this article is asking.
To really answer it, we need a little more information, such as the proportion of drivers of the affected Toyotas that are older.
Is it normal to mention someone's age if they are not old? Do newspaper articles commonly say "Mr Smith, age 37"? Perhaps not. But they are likely to say "Mr Smith, age 82, and grandfather to 7" because it "adds colour".
[Edit: although I suspect the same also happens around age 18-21, implying irresponsible driving.]
Rings true enough, but why is that? Is it because young bodies can absorb more on impact? Or because young people have better survival instincts?
There are certainly reasons to be skeptical. In addition to age, consider for example the fact that it tends to be highly correlated with automatics vs manuals.
it was a teen and she said she accidentally pressed down on the accelerator instead of the brake. the place was destroyed but fortunately no one was hurt.
Young drivers kill and injure far more people than elderly drivers.
It seems like you're correcting me, but how is your point anything but tangential? If you're wondering why inexperienced drivers aren't also over-represented, it's probably because not many 16-21 year olds drive priuses.
Very few people, regardless of how long they've been driving, ever get experience with uncontrolled sudden acceleration.
I also ended up in situations where my instinct or experience told me to accelerate instead of pushing the breaks. This happens often.
Got plenty of experience driving on glazed frost. I even crashed once because of the car skidding ... went off-road, with the car rolling over a couple of times, and me and the other passenger survived with minor injuries.
From that experience I learned that whatever you do (besides wearing a seat-belt) you have to avoid trees.
IMHO, more experienced drivers are better, and I've seen some pretty good instincts coming from 40-50 year-old or so acquaintances.
I really don't know what I would do with a sudden acceleration problem. I would probably try to remain calm and wait for it to recover (pushing the acceleration / brake to trigger events, try to stop the engine), and try not crashing.
On a side note ... that's why I don't like cars with automatic transmissions. If my current car experienced a sudden acceleration problem, I could just take it out of gear or do an old-fashioned motor-brake.
When old people drive cars they are more likely to crash therefore when old people drive a Prius they are more likely to crash.
Here's the full, 24-minute 911 call audio. Does that sound like genuine panic to you? How would someone who doesn't know how to stop a car have any idea if their "brakes are almost burned"? http://jalopnik.com/5489553/runaway-prius-911-tape-im-over-9...
The driver filed for bankruptcy in 2008, and still has $700,000 in debt. http://jalopnik.com/5491101/did-bankrupt-runaway-prius-drive...
There's significant reason to suspect this guy may have attempted a pretty blatant cash grab.
Regardless, I think the Corolla is the only Toyota sedan that still has rear-drums. I believe all others (maybe barring the bottom-rung Camry) are 4-wheel discs. The brake systems on Lexuses are also significantly beefier (though nowhere near sports car territory). C&D did tests with Mustang GT500s -- which while having beefier brake packages, aren't anything compared to normal supercars and high-end sports cars -- had no problem stopping a 500HP engine from 120mph while maintaining wide-open-throttle. Sure, it took some distance, but it definitely stopped. My point is, if you step on the brake pedal and don't release, ANY car that is properly maintained will stop.
On a side note, I recently had a stuck accelerator less than a week ago. (No it isn't a Toyota) Since I drive a manual transmission, I just quickly clutched and shifted to neutral. The engine redlined a bit before I killed it, which isn't good, but no serious harm to anyone or machine as far as I can tell. I coasted to a stop and then pulled the gas pedal from the floor with my hand. The weird thing is, after your comment just now I was trying to remember whether I tried to apply the brakes and I don't remember. It is cliche, but it "happened so fast," haha.
Not to sound like a jerk, but if you're too panicked to do this, maybe you shouldn't be piloting a several thousand pound piece of steel around...
Also, this supports my belief that every driver should have to know how to drive a vehicle with a manual-shift gearbox. Shifting into neutral would probably happen without much of a second thought for somebody who normally drives a stickshift.
So, if the gas is stuck and the brakes are both applied they will act in opposition, and with most engines the engine will overpower the brakes. So, applying the breaks will slow it down (especially if you apply normal and emergency breaks together), but it probably will not stop.
I vaguely remember a newscast where someone did apply both brakes and it slowed them down from some extreme speed to somewhere around the 40s or 50s.
Car and Driver actually did a test (http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_u...), and even a hot (540HP) Roush stage 3 Mustang didn't overpower the brakes at 70MPH.
Yes, there is an issue with overheating the brakes, but that will take a fairly long time, certainly longer than the time it should take you to figure out wtf is going on and shift to neutral or turn the ignition off.
IMHO, the outcome of these incidents being someone dying has driver error written all over it, even if the runaway acceleration actually is real.